Tag: Eric Larson

Yes I’m still reading about Nazis. It’s a dense book. Well, not dense in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich sort of dense, but dense. Anyway, I’m just hoping that I finish it before I fly off to Stockholm. In three weeks. I swear, if I haven’t finish this book by then I’ll give up. Out of spite. I remember one of my English lit professors telling me about how she read War and Peace and she was about 50 pages from finishing and quit reading the book “out of spite”. Clearly, that story resonated with me. She’s an administrator now.
Yesterday was the Eastside 10k, also known as the fifth race I’ve ever ran. I took it easy this week and felt pretty good when I left my house yesterday morning in the pouring rain. I’ve written a few times about how I prefer running in inclement weather, though that is usually more to do with the dearth or other people on the Seawall and the Eastside 10k had sold out as of Thursday. Anyway, I left with what I thought was plenty of time then to find that the line up for bag check was a block long meaning that I stood in line for about 20 minutes then made my way to the start corral with only a few minutes before the gun, which meant that I did not have nearly enough time to stand around and slip into some crowd-induced anxiety attack. I hoped to break 45 minutes in this race, a rather ambitious goal. I was feeling fine crossing the start line but I just didn’t feel like I was going to break any personal records and at the 2 km marker when the 45 minute pacer passed me I just settled in for a decent time. And it went all good. The rain was great and the route was great. A few times it felt a little slippery but it was all great and around half way I thought of quickening my pace and then at six a little more and then at seven and the whole time I was in my head comparing the route and its rolling hills to the rolling hills along Dallas Drive in Victoria and I kept trying to figure out if I was was running Stanley Park where would I be right now and then I can around a corner the there was the 45 minute pacer a couple hundred metres ahead and I thought maybe I could catch him and not die and just past 9 km near the bottom of the Dunsmuir Viaduct I passed him I crossed the finish line and clicked off my Fitbit Surge and of course it recorded that I’d only ran 9.98 km and then passed that same lie on to Strava so neither recorded my new personal record of 44:56 chip time for a 10 km run. I think that the Eastside 10k is my favourite race and I really cannot wait for my Chronos to arrive.